J Afr Am St (2017) 21:111–117 DOI 10.1007/s12111-017-9338-8 A RT I C L E S

An Interview with Norma Mtume Antwanisha Alameen-Shavers 1

Published online: 23 January 2017 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2017

Keywords Black panther party . Women in the black panther party . Black panther interview On July 5, 2016, I had the honor of interviewing via telephone Ms. Norma Mtume formerly known as Norma Armour. She was a leading member in the Black Panther Party from 1969–1977. Our interview lasted for over 1 h and was recorded. Below is the full transcription of our discussion. Antwanisha Alameen-Shavers: WhatwereyourpositionsintheBlackPantherParty? Norma Mtume: I started off in L.A and I ran the health clinic here. The person that was over finances here used to go up North every week to work on the newspaper so she taught me how to handle the finances here as well. I was the Assistant finance person and the Clinic director or coordinator here in L.A from 69–72 when I transferred to Oakland. When I got to Oakland, I was placed in the clinic again as the coordinator/director. I did that for a couple of years. And the same person that was the finance person here in L.A had become the finance person up there in Oakland. She left the Party in ’74 and that’s when Elaine (Brown) remembered that I had worked with her in L.A. Because I knew Elaine from L.A, we were both from this chapter. Anyway, she asked me to come and become the Minister of Finance or the CFO and that’s when I became a part of the Central Committee. AAS: What made you join the Party when you did in ’69?

* Antwanisha Alameen-Shavers [email protected]

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San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA

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NM: My first husband joined the Party shortly after we got married. He had been trying to get me to come around but I was busy. I was going to school. I was trying to do something different. But in December ’69 when the police were raiding offices all over the country, they raided a few of our offices here in Los Angeles. He was in one of them and they beat him up pretty badly. He was in the hospital and then he was in jail and going to trial and what not. And that kind of got my attention. That’s when I started coming around and working at the breakfast program, then I started typing for the Officer of the Day. Shortly after that I was in the Party and I was assigned to run the clinic. AAS: Did you stay married for the duration you were in the Party? NM: I was married but we weren’t together for the full time. AAS: What year did you leave the Party? NM: In ‘77 AAS: After Elaine Brown became the Chairman of the Party in 1974, she elected to place four additional women on the Central Committee. Do you believe that having more women on the central committee impacted women overall in the Party? And if so, how? NM: People ask a lot about the male-female relationships and this is a question that I haven’t thought much about. Unlike a lot of women in the Party, I didn’t have a lot of men problems. Some of the sisters did. I didn’t have problems with the guys I was with for the most part. And I don’t know if that’s because even though my husband and I weren’t together, they knew that he was my husband and how close we were. I don’t know if that had anything to do with it. He was a part of the security team until he became ill with multiple sclerosis. I know that a lot of the direction of the Party and what we were doing changed significantly. It changed in terms of how we were getting our funding. We were looking to be more sustainable so we actually started writing grants and getting funded to run our programs, rather than just the money that came from the newspaper and collecting donations. And most of those programs women ran. And probably from early on the woman ran them. But during that time definitely women ran the schools and ran the two corporations that we had set up. So those, what we would call now social service programs and what we called then the survival programs, especially the administration pieces were ran by women. AAS: From your perspective why do you think the Party is still so heavily painted as a masculine organization or a male organization? Do you believe the women are overlooked in regards to the history? NM: Yes, I know they are because I’ve been to a number of events. Even when folks are writing books and producing movies, you get a heavy male perspective and you don’t hear very much about us. You hear about the battles with the police

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and that piece of it. And the men are like the real soldiers but the women were the backbone of holding together all the programs. If you are not taking care of the infrastructure everything else crumbles and the women for the most part were the ones holding that together. AAS: Were there any issues in the Party that you particularly disagreed with in regards to rules that were created for men or for women that did not seem fair? NM: I don’t know if this was a hard task or written rule or unwritten rule but we perceived it to be real, that men could have relationships with women outside the party but women in the party weren’t allowed to. That was really looked down on. That was one real inequality kind of situation. AAS: You mention that you didn’t have many problems with men and you attributed some of that to your husband being on the security squad which makes sense if you have a husband on the security squad! NM: Well, he was subjected to rules like everybody else was but when I say that I didn’t have problems, if I didn’t want to be with somebody then I just wasn’t with them anymore. Just like outside of the Party, this is the way I was outside the Party. It was the same way I was inside the Party. As long as we were doing ok and were connected then we were fine. But if I didn’t want to deal with you anymore, then I didn’t deal with you anymore. And I don’t know if some of the other women were able to get out of their relationships that easily just like in mainstream America, a lot of women stay because of various reasons, but I’ve never been like that. AAS: Do you feel like you had a higher sense of agency? It seems like you had a higher sense of agency even separate from your husband. It was more so about Bhey no is no and yes is yes.^ Why do you think some women struggled with that or did some women struggle with that in the Party? Are they to blame for some of their abuse that they may have endured? NM: Women aren’t ever to be blamed for their abuse they endure. A lot of women had poor self-esteem, they came into the Party that way. These are the same sisters that on the streets that you know now, they have the same kinds of issues. Just like the men that came in, they were the same. A lot of them chauvinist in thinking like folks on the outside. They didn’t flip a switch as soon as they became party members, they were the same people. And I don’t know, I think they picked who they were going to be with. If they were going to be chauvinist with folk, they picked who those people were going to be. AAS: For those members that did come into the Party with that baggage, do you remember anything that was instituted to deal with those folks or to help those folks, for example men that had internalized misogyny or sexism? Or women that internalized sexism so they were mild and meek or maybe had low self-esteem or didn’t feel confident to stand up against

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issues? We all internalize it in different ways but how did the Party attempt to change their thinking? NM: The Party line was always that basically we were all equal; men and women basically did the same work. We were supposed to be giving each other the same respect despite what the gender was. I don’t remember any political education classes on the male-female relationships other than just in general that we were supposed to treat each other with respect. But when you have people in the leadership that were chauvinist as well, you know you could redress your grievances but you had to go to the people that were in leadership. I think that there were attempts to change some stuff when Elaine was in charge but when she wasn’t in charge there wasn’t a whole lot that she could do. AAS: You said that there were people in leadership that were sort of chauvinistic. What type of impact did that have on cases or grievances being brought for example? NM: And to tell you the truth, we were so busy dealing with other issues like staying alive and where we were going to get the money to run the programs and stuff, I don’t know that that (chauvinism) got the type of attention that it should have - just because you have competing pressing issues. That wasn’t put on top. AAS: While in the Party, did you get together with other women to vent about issues concerning sexism? NM: You know that probably did happen. But who you would take that to would probably be someone that you felt really open to talk with about it and wouldn’t be chastised about it. BLike that’s petty and we got this other stuff to deal with.^ So there may have been those kind of conversations that went on among women. But I mean just like in the regular world, in my workplace that I recently retired from, people would come to me and say Bwell, did you know about so and such^ and I would say Bno^. Because I am not in the middle of people coming and, well in that regard it will be gossip, but in the Party that wouldn’t be gossip. Most of the time, I wouldn’t be somebody that the person was having that kind of issue would bring that to. I don’t know if they thought Bwell she’s not having that kind of trouble so I’m not going to talk to her, I’ll talk to someone else^. They may have thought that I wouldn’t have understood it. But after I left the Party, I heard of other incidents of women being really abused. And while I was there, I mean its like I said, men and women fighting or men beating up the women occasionally just like in the regular world. Not to say it’s ok. It was horrid, it was horrible and I don’t think it was a lot of redress for those even if the women did go to complain. But not being in the middle of it, I don’t really know. And a lot of times things were pretty secretive. If somebody was chastised for something, everybody wouldn’t necessarily know about it. You would

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have to be somebody in a position or been one of the chastisers to know that something even happened and that wasn’t something that you went around telling people, BOh we did this to so and so.^ AAS: Elaine Brown talks about receiving lashes in her book. She was physically disciplined which was a practice that both women and men endured in the Party. Could it be that the abuse that you speak of in regards to women being abused was a part of that physical disciplining process which was gender neutral or was it different? NM: Yeah they were different. They are two different things totally. There were women that were abused by the men and then there were men and women who got physical discipline. All that goes back to…I know you read Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. It was the psychological residuals from slavery. We beat each other up. We don’t treat each other well. We don’t treat ourselves well. AAS: Do you think it was difficult for people to truly internalize the idea of power to ALL people? It seemed that some people wanted to rely on coercive methods to access power which could explain why men abused women. I am just trying to figure out why Black men that wanted an end to racial oppression against themselves by white people but could not see that abusing Black women was in fact a form of domination. NM: Awwww, this is some 40 odd years later. And I’m trying to remember. And a lot of times, especially with me, if you leave in really bad circumstances, you don’t try to remember a whole lot of stuff. And sometimes when I start thinking about it again, it’s kind of like PTSD. You know it picks up stuff that I really don’t want to deal with in my life right now. AAS: I know, I am sorry. NM: But no, that’s ok. Like you said, you are trying to figure some things out so that other people understand in organizations how you can do things better and move forward more than we were able to do. Because we had a lot of things that held us back ourselves. But like I said, the whole male female relationship thing, there was a lot of chauvinism. I have to say that as far as it being inflicted on me, I’m really trying to remember instances when that happened. AAS: Do you want to talk about why you left the Party? NM: My leaving was very unpleasant. Let me leave it at that. I was expelled by Huey for his own personal reasons. AAS: When you look back on it, was it a hurtful experience? Yeah I had a lot of anger and bitterness for a while. But then I started to realized that this whole karma, goes around comes around kind of thing, I said Bhe is

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going to die an awful death cause he’s doing people this way and it’s uncalled for^ and so I just had to let it go. I couldn’t hang on to stuff like that and have it eating away at me like a cancer. It took me like seven or eight months to finally get to a place where I felt like I forgave him because I couldn’t hold on to that. I forgave him for me. AAS: I am glad you did. It seems that you are in a good place now. You have a good life. NM: Yeah, yeah. I came out of it and haven’t really looked back. I came a long way. AAS: When you look back on the situation and how Huey P Newton treated you, do you think it was connected to you being a woman? Or would you say that was not a factor, he would have done that to anybody? NM: He would have done it to anybody because it was all about him. It really wasn’t about anybody else. AAS: This may be a tough question to answer. There were several sources or a few sources that mentioned women being ganged raped. Had you heard about that or witnessed anything of the sort? NM: I heard people say that after I got out of the Party but I mean if it happened, I’m sure people wouldn’t make this up, but while I was in the Party, no. And like I said, a lot of times things like that, things may happen and then folks don’t say anything about it because they are afraid. And maybe after they leave, finally they get enough courage to say it. Or people that are writing books that have that knowledge put it in there but personally, I don’t know. It didn’t happen to me and it didn’t happen to people that lived in my house where I would be aware of it. AAS: In your house or at least in the literature it says you all called them Panther Pads? NM: Yes, communes. It’s like you know the socialists and communists people have communes where several people lived. AAS: And were you living with men and women or both? NM: Yes, initially I was living with men and women here in Los Angeles when I first came in the Party. I had my own apartment but soon that became the Panther Pad and other people moved in. And then when I broke up with my husband and moved into one of the official party houses, there were several men and women living there. But when I moved up to Oakland, most of the time I had my own place. I only lived in Party houses for a while and then I was able to get my own income and get some student loans so I had my own place. So it was just a few people living there after that. So I wasn’t in a lot of those situations where a whole lot of people were there all the time either, it was just me

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and my best girlfriend and maybe my partner, my boyfriend and my kids. I didn’t have a lot of people living in my houses up North. AAS: There was a book that came out called Black Against Empire and they had a section where they discussed gender and panther pads. And they were saying that some of the women did a lot of the work maintaining houses. Even though it was communal sharing, women still found themselves doing a lot of the work like cleaning and cooking. Though they said it in the book, I am not sure where they got that information from so I was wondering what you thought about that? NM: That wasn’t my experience here in Los Angeles. People would get up in the morning and do the breakfast program. Men did the cooking and everybody went out in the field and most of the time, what we called the OD or the Officer of the Day, that person that stayed in the office all day, if things weren’t tidied up they may be tidying things up. Naw, especially me, naw, I wasn’t…umm ummph (sound that demonstrates no or a definite no). Men cooked quite a bit, as a matter of fact, when we had our school, our chief cook was a man that ran the kitchen. The cooks at the children’s school, there were men and women. Naw, that was not my experience. And even down to taking care of the children, men worked in the nursery and the school. And then you have to remember that I didn’t come in the Party until the very end of ’69. Some people were in the Party from ’66. So early on when they were just getting started and when they were really hashing out things so I can’t even speak for the 3 ½–4 ½ year period that I wasn’t even involved at all, the early Party. So people that were involved longer like Elaine and Erica were around much longer than me. AAS: Yeah that would have been really interesting if women were working in the field all day long and were then expected to go home and work even longer in the home just because they were so-called women as oppose to everyone pulling their own weight in this communal living situation. NM: Yeah naw, you had some women that were kinda meek but then you had women that were like Bhey^…that wasn’t going down. That would have been a gang fight right there. (Laughter) AAS: Yeah dealing with women in my family that’s not goin’ happen (laughter). NM: If you messed it up, you cleaned it up. And then you had assignments. Like you had chores. This might be your week to do the cleaning. And the next week somebody else is up. Somebody else is on for cooking. Somebody is cleaning up the kitchen. There were schedules and stuff. I can’t remember women doing everything ever. But like I said, I came in ’69 so I can’t speak for the early on years. AAS: Well, Ms. Norma I really appreciate you giving me this interview, taking time to talk with me today.